People-Pleasing and the Need to Prove So Much to So Many – Lila R.

My name is Lila and I'm an alcoholic. Oh boy. Who the hell are you guys in the kitchen there? Do you have permission to sit back there? I hope you got it from the ghosts that I sat with. I hope they don't haunt you. You know, I speak here and there, and I never get nervous. I just put my hand on my forehead and turn it all over, and I stop denying the fact that sometimes if you have a gift of sharing, then that's being of service and AA, and you should get on with it. But I have to tell you, I'm nervous in this room. oh i'm not nervous like scared or anything not that kind of nervous i i i i'm humbled by the feeling of being back in the room after so long um i don't know about six ten years ago somebody came through here from the great beyond and got a spiritual vacuum cleaner and sucked up everybody i loved right out of this room within about a two-year period of time and this room is like it's like Ireland to me you know it's where I spent you know I don't live in Ireland anymore I obviously live here although I go there and when I go there I go home and that is exactly the feeling that I had when I walked in this morning and I looked at that kitchen where I spent oh god knows 30 years in this meeting and 20 of them I had the honor of spending it with a handful of gentlemen in the kitchen I don't know how I graduated into that kitchen but I had the privilege of listening to people with a lot more sobriety I was the child in the kitchen I was baby and I watched a life in action and I watched a in action and I learned a lot so it's home to me it's home to when I used to listen to these men talk you know ever so casually to each other about great events in their life I suppose between the all of us in the kitchen there was great abundance and great loss and there was Great Wealth and there is great poverty and and it all happened at all various times and people got through everything and there was divorces and I mean I mean the things that did that happened just to us in the kitchen never mind the people that came into the kitchen to discuss their situations I was like wow this is just amazing and and I always had the same selfish reaction which was Christ I hope none of that ever happens to me you know because I was so busy during that time doing what I didn't know because retrospect is the gift of sobriety isn't it after all you know I didn't know that I was changing the concept of my God into money property and prestige became my God and here I am coming every Sunday into this spiritual vortex in the kitchen of a Ohio Street and yet I'm out there in the world you know defending myself and building these things and so that I I will be protected and that I will never have to deal from the inside out that I can only deal from the outside in and I was very successful at that thank God that I listened carefully to all the people that went before me and did similar things you know so that when things happen to me I thought okay you know this is this this I understand that and and I understood the ethic and the principle and the dynamic of Alcoholics Anonymous as a result of watching it from that kitchen you know I love the doughnuts and I mean they cut them into little chunks. But, you know, a few years ago, bigger donuts. I mean, we had bigger donuts, must be the economy, I don't know, but, you know. And we used to sit back there and, you know, all Chuck cared about is that the coffee person didn't show up so he could clean out the coffee pot. And, you know, what Jules and I cared about was that the cake cutter didn't show up so we could cut the cake without interfering with the meeting and yet I used to watch these guys and John and all of them you know look at the doughnut people coming to pick out a doughnut and I once said to Jules you know Jesus you know you're all fascinated everything gets quiet you could be talking about big things burying people you know divorce I don't know murder whatever it is we didn't have signs on the wall that said weapons fighting and animals are not permitted they were permitted so all that was discussed in the kitchen and while we were discussing all these things it would become silent the minute somebody would go to up the box with the doughnuts and everybody would look at the person and it took a could be years for me to figure out you know it's quiet I said why are you always silent when they come well you know this is a big insight you know if you really watch how people pick out a doughnut you can tell a lot about the person. Do you know to this day I believe that? To this day, I no longer, I mean the things you learn, I don't no longer evaluate or prejudge or assume I know anything about anybody because of what they say to me. Certainly not. And or because of the way they necessarily look. But oh, I can tell a whole lot about you if I see you pick out a donut." You know, they were looking for the guy whose hand was still shaking. They were looking to the person that came in for the donut that maybe hadn't eaten the night before so that they could invite them over to Dolores' for a cup of coffee and a slice of apple pie after the meeting. They were looking for the person who actually selfishly would take half of a donut in their hand and throw the other half back and we would judge that person severely. Say, now that's the kind of person you don't want in your life really. I was the kind of person that wanted to jump out of the kitchen and organize the donuts, line them all up, put them by color. And I'm still that way today. A lot of you asked me this morning, and thank you for that, where Jane is my partner, my life, my great friend and my spouse somewhat. She's in Paris for four months. She retired last year and we're humbled by our existence in alcohol. We're humbled by how much abundance, we are humbled by it to the degree that even with her time in AA and certainly mine, it wasn't that long ago that we had to write an inventory not about what we didn't have or what was wrong, but how do you deal with having? How do you deal with that? How to deal with the excitement? How did you deal with the things that you fought against having all of your sobriety so that you would not have to feel on that deeper level how humbling it is just to be here. We decided that because she had retired and had a childhood dream to spend some time in Paris and we'd been in and out of there, why would you wait? Why would you wait and a month is not enough and two months is not enough and four months is just the right amount of time, so she is now for four months in Paris fulfilling her dream going to the Alliance and blah blah blah blah blah. I have no desire now to do anything like that. I think why in the hell don't I have somebody that wants to go to Ireland for four months? Now I'd go there in a minute you know or somewhere else but I will go when I fulfill my obligations frankly the obligations that I made over the next couple of months to Alcoholics Anonymous and I will in the heart of that and spend a couple of months with her. I am humbled by that, I cannot tell you how that makes me feel inside. It's impossible for me to not feel the ghosts in the room, it's impossible for me to be overwhelmed by how much I now know. Let me clarify that, how much I now have experienced. I have lived chronologically long enough and been sober, I got sober on October 1st 1969 and the majority of my sobriety up until the last I would say 12 years or so was spent coming in and out of this room and being educated and taught and loved and cared for by those gentlemen. Most of what I learned from them was because I didn't talk to them. It was after the fact and now I'm very grateful for that too. You know, I remember that I knew from the very beginning, for me, as a child growing up, do I qualify as an alcoholic? You know you didn't give me enough time to tell you that. So I will just simply say the greatest intimate relationship I've ever had is with porcelain. If you understand that, you know, what do we all have in common so we can just skip to the chase? Bathroom floors. if you get that you get the kind of alcoholic that I am if you don't get that you'll get it on the way home I'm the kind of alcoholic that believes that if I drink again I'm going to make that decision stone cold sober and I will probably meet it make that decision because I'm an attender of meetings if I stop going to meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous I know I'll drink again I don't question it I'm not interested in your opinion about it that's the way it is for me I believe it. Because I go to meetings, then I have to pay attention when I'm in them. As a result, I've learned to listen and it's the practice of listening, the practice of coming, the process of coming when I don't want to the practice doing all of that that has literally changed my life. I believe in I don' know, I completely lost my train of thought I was saying that one of the things that I learned early on, which you can never leave Alcoholics Anonymous. I was told that I am the kind of alcoholic that cannot drink again for the rest of my life. How I chose to do that now was a day at a time, hour at a time. No longer debating that bullshit either that the guy that gets up first in the morning has the most sobriety. You know, we're all this close to a drink. I don't know. People make that up to make themselves feel good. I-I don't understand any of that crap. You know it sounds good. The truth is I have a better shot at it probably than you. Because I've had all this experience of getting down on my knees when I didn't want to, of turning myself over and I'm not opening my eyes in the morning. I don't even open my eyes until I know that I can get through the third step. If I can't get through this third step, I'll stay in bed until I get through 12. I have to know that at this moment I am not powerless over anything. I know what it's like to be under the influence of alcohol. I know more. I've been sober far longer than I ever drank. so I know what it's like to be under the influence of fear and fear that terrorized me and all that kind of thing and I don't want to live that way anymore I know how to live my life I know who I am I know where I'm at I know when it's time to be under the effect of anger and judgment and worry and oh sheesh all the stuff that I burdened myself with I burden myself with it for so long because I blamed you because it was happening to me oh god I had to over you well over 20 years before I started to work the steps in the order that they were written certainly in my 15 to 20 years when I realized I don't think AA is working for me anymore despite the fact that I have able to turn it over and be restored to sanity. Sanity. I didn't know what sanity really meant. It's nothing but balance. Nothing but balance you know. Am I comfortable? Am I comfortable? My comfortable and if unresolved and something's going on in my life can I be comfortable by the time I get to bed? I was in my fifteenth or sixteenth year before I got down on my hands and knees, for God's sake. I refused. Such a religious thing. I don't do it for religious reasons. I do it so that I can feel the humility of getting down on my knees. I do with my back to the door because no self-serving alcoholic will ever have their back to an open door. I need to be humbled. I ask for help. And so the result of doing that over and over and over again makes me instantly, instantly closer to being sober and closer to my sobriety than the guy that thinks he gets up with the birds and he's safe. The myths of Alcoholics Anonymous, that everybody grows wings here and becomes saints almost killed me. Almost caused me to leave Alcoholics Anonymous. I remember walking into the kitchen devastated because somebody with my length of sobriety, a couple of decades, had embezzled money from me. Oh not a small amount of money, a large amount of money. But oh no, of course he wouldn't because blah blah blah the documents and the collateral and the whatever. And I'm smart, by the way. Managed not to work for 20 years managing my own portfolio, but no, I'll turn around and give a member of Alcoholics Anonymous that I don't hardly know a fortune. Don't think that when all is said and done, I haven't had to look at my side of the street for what motivated me to do that. And I have. But I remember losing that money, and I certainly knew I wasn't going to get it back. And I went into the kitchen and I said, oh, you know what happened to me? Blah, blah, blah. And they folded their arms. And I said well, why didn't you ask us before you gave them the money? I said well, I didn't think to ask you before I gave them the money. And he said well if you had asked us before you made the decision, we would have told you the guys a crook and that you were now in line with a long group of people and alcoholics and honest have been taken in by this con man and I said but he's sober and they said you need to come with us for some pie I run into people in a meeting like this and I understand that the spiritual nature of the entity of Alcoholics Anonymous is bigger and better than all of us because I forget what the incidences are. I forget what happened. I forget your stories. I only know that I'm grateful to see you. I only Know That Why We Know Each Other or Don't Know Each Other. At the very beginning, we struggled into these meetings. You know, really, if we weren't standing upright and in our soul, we were dragging. I was climbing on my hands and knees into these meetings. I just looked upright. But frankly, the real me wasn't here at all. I remember being a phony in Alcoholics Anonymous. I remember doing everything drunk that I've ever done except drink in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I can tell you, you outlive it all. You have to have some sort of process though. There has to be a ritual. There hast to be a, for me, there has to be up a practice, you see, because I'm that kind of alcoholic and that's what I learned in that room. Ask the question before you make the decision, for God's sake, Lila. Do I still make that mistake? Up until like two years ago, I made that mistake. I just kind of got it recently. It's like Oprah's AHA moments, you know. I have these like AA, oh my gosh almighty. Now, it would be good if I only had them once, but I have them over the same thing every 10 years or so. It is just deeper, you You know, that's why I'm very happy to be happy. I'm grateful to have my life in order. I'm in a position in my life where I don't have much to worry about unless I want to self-create some madness. Manufacture, as it says in the book, my own misery. I don' t really worry about something unless I need to distract myself from how happy I am that day. In such case, I'll create some worry right away. But I catch myself now because I have caught myself hurting myself and harming myself so much. I spent the first many, many years of my sobriety working the steps so that I wouldn't harm you. I spent so many years of my subriety trying to figure out how to work the steps with people like me for me, finding persons that understood my kind of individual. I became a student not of studying, not of talking about, but of practicing these principles. Nobody can practice them for me so I'm the only one that did that. I did that because I watched the practice of those things work themselves out in these rooms over and over and again. I watched people fall down and get up a thousand times. I watched myself fall down and getup a thousand time. Just practice. Practice knowing when I am not in charge. Practice knowing when I'm powerless. Practice knowing when my life is unmanageable. I was shocked one day when I realized, I'm not so sure I understand what unmanageable really means. What does that mean, unmanangeable? If it means you're stressed and burdened and all this crap's happening to you and you are unresolved and you're sure there's no solution for you and you'll never find anybody to love you, you'll ever be able to find somebody to love, you'll always never have anything, you're absolutely on the way to that poor house and we're going to shoot you too. But in my case, I wouldn't have been lucky enough to be killed, you know. I mean, just going to have to live through this misery. What kind of thinking is that? Now, it was comfortable for me to be thinking that way. I thought, okay, I can function in this way. And then little things start to happen if you stay sober long enough and you really make an effort at the steps and you find out they're about absolutely being content. They're about making room. They're About Making Room, Making Room. Making Room so you get into yourself. for me. This is my experience. Get inside, get inside, get inside so that I'm more comfortable, so that I'm less afraid. Well, you know, the less afraid I became, the more I found out I terrify myself. The more comfortable I became,the more I wanted to be more comfortable and realized I wasn't making myself comfortable. The more I did the steps, the more I needed to do them. The more I understood AA, the more I wanted it. The more I listened to this soul sickness that was pushing me in my sobriety, the more I needed it. That I want, I want I want for peace became everything. I understood there was no one no one that I could really look up to. No, I could look up to a collective little group of people because while we were all happy in the kitchen. I mean, every now and then they do the stupidest things. I remember once somebody wanted to change the meeting to one hour. I meant we needed to do it at the time. Oh, the feedback. I said, what is the matter with you people? I'm talking to my gang back there. How rigid you are. This meeting was started all those years ago by you, this gentleman. So that, you know, people would have another voice and another place so that they could express themselves. and here you are as rigid as the people that you have condemned and judged didn't mean a damn thing we never did change that meaning but it didn't matter I got to express myself and I found out what happens when you do that they didn't give one damn either we went for pie anyway we talked about meaningless things you see when all is chaotic that's what you need to do you needto go for pie You just need to be comforted. You need to have a cup of tea and a slice of toast and some jam, and you need to sit at your sponsor's house or a good friend's house, and you needs to just relax for a little while. It isn't going to change the outside. It's just going to make you feel a little more comfortable. Oh, when I found out that that's what the steps could do for you, I started to give myself more little sandwiches. I started to take extra time making and brewing a cup of tea. What has this got to do? My life is falling apart. It's going to fall apart anyway one way or the other, so have the tea. Call somebody before you make any decisions when you're out of balance. I need to know that I'm unmanageable so that I need know I'm out of balanced so that I can pray that morning before I open my eyes to what I believe in. And it doesn't matter what I do. What I believe in or what you believe in, you just have to believe in something other than your own self. Nothing's changed more for me and my sobriety than what I believe in I mean the sorting through of what you can believe in is vast and then the great sadness has started to happen for me back to back you know my family is raging alcoholics and they died one by one they died they died younger than me and here I am still sober and they die and then my friends in AA were dying and then I got a call from Carol Chuck and she was dying and then this one was dying and then the big vacuum came into Ohio Street and they were sucked out of here and i had to rely on the collective spiritual consciousness of all those people and that became my god of my great understanding it helps to be irish to have this kind of believe in the debt i come from that old irish family you know where if you hear a knock on the door my mother would say i'll let them in let them i let them in. I let them in, I try to use the steps and stay spiritually fit so that I know to hear the knock on the door, so that i know when to let them in, so, that I don't take off and do it myself. Does it matter that this makes no sense maybe to you or to me? Certainly not. I remember what I was for first time I ever spoke really Jules hauled me down to the Salvation Army in downtown Los Angeles. I was sober 20 seconds and actually it was a few months, and he said you know come with me now there's no one else that I can bring. It's nice. Bill Jerigo you know. And I have to speak at this meeting downtown. Whoa this is very cool. I get to go with him and I got all dressed up and everything and we go down to the salvation army where the room was the size of, you know, this. And behind where you sat was this huge big icebox that made more noise than the traffic on the freeway. There were maybe seven or eight guys in the room. The kind of guys I got sober with, you know, blood in the ears, no teeth, that kind of thing. And I was the speaker. He said, oh, by the way, you're talking to these guys tonight. First of all, I didn't want to. That didn't matter, you know. That didn't matter because at AA you learn and then you find out it's your saving grace when you're as old as I am that you do all the things you don't want to do anyway. Action is the magic word around here, you do what you don�t want to really. You want to be miserable? Be miserable. But if you don �t want be miserable go to a movie. You do anything but the opposite. You pick up the phone, you call somebody, you make a decision. So here I am and I said to him for God's sake how do I know what to say? do I say? I haven't prepared anything." He said, talk to the one guy in the room. One guy. Pick a guy and talk to him. Well it was very hard because they all fell asleep. So I talked to the drunk that was listening to me unconsciously. And you know it changed my life and I've never come to a meeting to talk to you. I've come to meeting to to talk to the one person that needs to hear the one thing that may change their life. And I may never get to know that, I only know that by showing up all these years, doing it every time I'm asked or when I can, that I have opened myself up and opened myself up and open myself up until finally I'm not afraid to talk the next alcoholic at all. And then I can walk into a room and I can look at 42 years almost of people and we're We're on an equal footing on the same playing field, and all that matters is we're here. We're doing it. We're continuing to practice this program in all our affairs. Does anything else really matter? Oh, I'm interested. You know, your kid's grown up, have they gone to college? What are you doing with yourself? But am I really interested? Not really. Not really! Are you really interested in my life? Are you... Oh, you might be. How did she not work for 20 years? Where'd she get the money? you know, fine. Honestly, by the way. Why? I survived that event in Alcoholics Anonymous. It made me smarter. Made a couple of more mistakes because I didn't ask somebody first, but now I asked somebody first. Oh God, I wish I could tell you how much you can learn if you stay sober a long time those of you that haven't but I can't I can only tell you that the silliest smallest tiniest doing it over and over and over and again is what's going to change your life the big events weren't what the deal was handling the torture of my life didn't change me a wish trying to be happy for five minutes a day changed me. Trying to give a little more to somebody else when I sure didn't want to changed me making more time to brew the tea get the right jam and make the good sandwich changed me listening at meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous changed me being willing to put my hand out for the new guy that's still here and new and whatever changed me Being willing to nod when I know that there's differences of opinion, but we're still here, changed me. Being willingto know that no matter who's running the meeting, whose meeting it is, what kind of meeting itis, I'm just grateful there's meetings of Alcoholics Anonymous, and if the whole thing blew up, me and some other asshole would be out there trying to figure out how to redo the wholething again. And we would, and we would get it all started, and then we would fight about how we should do it. and now I sort of enjoy it I'm grateful that people stay sober I really am what their motivation is doesn't matter to me anymore I can honestly tell you that being sober was a financial benefit to me in my business would I have stayed sober if it wasn't? probably, because I was doing all the right things but maybe not I'm not 100% when I found out that people were in love with me for all the wrong reasons would I have drunk over that? well, I don't know I was doing all the right things I was coming to meetings I was talking to people I had obligations I had sponsees I mean, I had things I had to do I didn't have time to go out there and get drunk or kill myself have I learned over the years that it's important to eat a sandwich? how important could that be? very important I remember once calling a guy in the middle of the night when I was newly sober and he said to me, I said look you know, I'm going to kill myself. And as a drunk, I never had a desire to kill my self so this thing's not working. And I'm just going to just kill myself, I don't want to be sober, I didn't like the whole sober thing, it physically hurts my hair, I mean, just horrible really. And besides, I'm lonely. I miss all my little drunken friends. Not that any of them had called me frankly, but not that I even had any really to speak of. But I said it's over. And he said have you eaten that banana? I said no. He said well eat the banana and call me back. Now that's all we had to do when we got sober here. We had to go to meetings, eat bananas, read the big book, take a bath. That was it. Bring somebody else to a meeting that was newer than you. That tough. He said, did you eat the banana? I said no. Okay, okay, okay. Do you have a banana? Of course I have a banana! You know, you guys are like freaking me out with these goddamn bananas and Hershey bars and Coca Colas. Little did I know that my My sugar was off, my body was off. I was crazy. If I didn't have the sugar, I would've had a seizure for God's sake. So here I am. The banana should've been the easiest part of it and I got stacks of bananas because I'm one of those. If one's good, thousands better. Bananas in the car. Do you know how fast bananas go bad? Anyway, banana. I had a banana. And I got the big book. I got in the tub to call them back. This is all happening in the middle of the night because they say, call us anytime. Dying now. it. And he said, are you in the tub? I said yes. And I said, and by the way, what page, what page is this, you know, I'm not going to die thing on? What page is that? Because I want to know. He said, oh, Lila, any page will do. Well, obviously I didn't kill myself. I'm still looking for it. Whatever page it is, whatever I got was comforting enough. the warmth of the bath was enough, I just needed a banana. How many times have I made decisions about big things? Life and death. My mother was dying and the one thing I had to remember was eat Lila for God's sake don't stop eating. I lost 20-30 pounds it was great really but came right back. Eat you've got to eat, you've gotta eat, are you sleeping enough Are you sleeping enough? You can sleep on the couch. Get some sleep. Go take a bath, Lila. Take a bath for a moment and read something. Call somebody on the phone and say, God, my mother is dying. And I have fallen in love with her. Oh, my God. The floor has fallen. But did I do anything different than what they told me at the beginning? ate something I got some sleep I took a bath I called somebody on the phone and I call somebody comforting I call someone that wasn't going to talk more about them than about me I call something it was going to tell me what to do the direction that I needed take a bath read the big book get on those steps I am powerless over this monumental death Oh God it makes my life unmanageable please restore me to some sort of sanity help me to eat help me to get a little bit of sleep help me be the best that I can be I will make a decision if that's what I have to do in order to activate that because I know that that person is inside of me I know that I am the best person I have ever known I know that the idol I have that the person I respect the most is my very self but oh how far away I am from that person and I need to be here now for myself and my mother and my family and those around me and so I knew that the third step that decision I would make that decision to make room to have more strength from inside more strength I wasn't asking for anything other than and just be able to be better, to do the best I could. While there's no question that before, during, and after those kind of deaths, you have a lot of opportunity to take inventories. And I had to take an inventory around that time about what was right about my family, what was Right about the people in my life, what was Write about them so that I could be the best that I can be and function in that area as opposed to what's wrong and what is the misery. What is Right? So that I could see everybody else's soul and see that they were sick and that they were hurting too. And I actually found wonder in that because I have learned to take inventories where I match the liabilities with the assets. The result of that is that a couple of years later, I now look around and I was packing Jane not too long ago for this long trip and I'm a great packer, you know, I can pack more in. And I feel that that comes from all this practicing the program and all your affairs, you know, like I never leave a place better. I always leave it better than I found it. I never leaves a little piece of anything around. I'm orderly. I have an orderly life. Things are one step in front of the other. So I'm a great packer. I mean, there's advantages to that, you know. If you're that kind of person and that's the kind of person you end up in your sobriety where I like things in order. You know, you should see my house. I walk around sometimes just out of calmness and go like that. people say well there's a disease for that and I said I'm sure there's a pill for it too but I'm not interested it works very very well in my life distracted again gotta wrap it up I'm distracted by aging I'm attracted by the fact that when I look back in that kitchen I see someone with no grey in their hair I see a white porcelain skin and bright blue eyes I see something someone that was so curious about life and so unafraid so afraid to be excited. I see someone that needed to prove so much to so many that never cared at all. And now I'm looking at the other end of the room and I've got the grey hair and frankly I've Got Skin that spends a lot of time in the Caribbean sun because we live part of the year there. And you know, I have learned so much as I have fallen down and gotten up on my struggle from the back of the womb to the front of the rim. I am so grateful for such little things that I'm not afraid of losing anything big. I will survive it. I understand what it means to be powerless and to get that power back and to want it to be just in balance. I'll make room for that and I'll take those inventories and I will talk to somebody and I say even if it's somebody that I have to call and say listen give me direction tell me to call you every day for the next month because wah and that's what I've had to do and then I get to six after I've done all I can do and I've told myself the truth. You see, I use five as a secret keeper. I call my secret keepers and I get rid of all those secrets. I don't have a secret inside of me today but I could have one tomorrow and then I accept my life as it is. I accept all these things that are unresolved. I accept the difficulty of other people even though it is not mine at this moment. I accept how to live with that. I accept that they're gone. I accept this is happening and then I say now I need God. You know, I need a God of my own understanding. I need you to dust off those wings and be with me every day because I am now living. I am 100% totally present. I am here. There is no image in front of me. I could stand naked before you and what you would not see is what I know about me inside. I am totally content within myself. Help me stay that way is my prayer. help me stay that way and eight nine well I try to keep it balanced because you see I have not forgiven but I have accepted that everybody's just like me and we're walking down that path aren't we and we were along the way and I'm just glad you're here I'm just glad your here because I could call any one of you in this room not any one if you wouldn't be doing but a few of you and some of you I will run into and I'll always be delighted to see you. And some of you I will run in to and my heart will cry and weep with such joy for just seeing you that day. And then I'll be present again, the ten, the walk-around step. And after I get home this afternoon I'll able to take an 11th step and say, you know what? Thank you all. Thank you for coming out of the walls and for being in the kitchen. Thank You for being there for me. Thank you for being there for me now. Don't let me forget you. You are my God of my understanding. I love to talk to the spirits that exist. I love knowing that my mother is, her hand is on my back like the wind. I know that my sister who suffered so much loves me unconditionally because oh my God when you have the love of dead alcoholics you know you're loved. I love how proud I am of all the work I have done. I love that I can give myself credit for wanting to be sober, for doing whatever it takes to be sober, for standing up and acknowledging my membership in Alcoholics Anonymous, for never being afraid what anybody says or does about AA. We will always be here. There will always be two of us. I'm delighted to have had the opportunity to come full circle. It's a time in my life when I needed to do that. After so much death and so much change and so much, it's time. It is time for me to let it go and I've been trying to let the past go and throw it over my shoulder. And I have not wanted to look too far in the future because I don't know. I only know that I have never been more excited and I am unafraid of that for the first time in my life. Thank you.